Boston’s Chuck Turner: 1940-2019

In Memoriam

Chuck Turner, for decades, was known for his work on behalf of those whose backs were against the wall.

By Kevin C. Peterson

The recent death of former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner inevitably turns those with whom he associated to awefully low moments of loss regarding his absence, his prodigious public presence and his abilities at palpably shaping the black political landscape in Boston.

Since his death on Christmas Day, audible lamentations have been sounding across the city from mourners who knew him well — who witnessed his personal warmth, who felt his infectious charm, who took measure of his unabated sallies into the public square pursuing social justice.

No one — ranging from the vast cast of those who loved him to the small coterie of civic cohorts who pledged their fealty — doubted Turner’s emotional and almost religious-like burning for equality in a city he came to love following his sojourn from Buck-Eye Ohio to Crimson Harvard, as a student.

By the 1990s Turner was, for many, a glabrous-skulled political evangelist whose fervent activism led to his transformation into an elected official on the Boston City Council. There, he projected his proclivities as the conscience of that body as its gadfly. And it was there on the council that his considerable intelligence was captured on the public records: his fact substantiated stances against encroaching…